Vehicle and traffic data to improve VW driver assistance systems

The Volkswagen Group has announced plans to use sensor and image data from customer vehicles in road traffic to continuously optimise its driver assistance systems and automated driving functions.

The project will require consent from the driver and the company aims to start this initiative in Germany from the fourth quarter of 2024, initially with models from the Volkswagen Passenger Cars and Audi brands. Other Group brands plan to gradually join the initiative and prepare their product portfolios accordingly.

The large fleet of vehicles from the Volkswagen Group already contributes to increasing overall traffic safety today. Among other things, the vehicles generate high-resolution maps using anonymised swarm data. This helps vehicles with lane guidance in areas without road markings. Precise driving instructions and hazard information, which can be narrowed down by local weather, are also possible.

Developers now aim to continuously optimise driver assistance systems with high-quality data from customer vehicles in real traffic situations. Such data are more everyday-relevant compared to tests with development vehicles or computer simulations. The goal is to make driver assistance systems as precise and smooth as possible. Users should perceive them as comfortable and useful and ideally always keep them activated. Active assistance systems offer increased safety for all: both the vehicles with activated systems and the road users in the immediate vicinity benefit from them.

For their work, developers focus on specific situations where driver assistance systems are particularly useful. Data transfer from the vehicle is triggered only in narrowly defined scenarios. Such triggers can include the use of the emergency brake assistant, manual full braking, and sudden evasive manoeuvres. Continuous data transfer for this purpose does not occur.

Certain sensor, function, and image data are particularly relevant for development work. These include camera images of the vehicle’s surroundings and detection results from the environment sensors, as well as the direction of travel, speed, and steering angle. Information on weather, visibility, and lighting conditions also plays an important role.